I have a VM that is in a ‘stuck’ state. That is I cannot power it off, reset it, or log into it.

[mcraig88]

Attached is the log, I grep'd the contents of vmware.log for info regarding this VM.

VM: swfdev01

Command:

# vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/Dev_VM3/swfdev01/swfdev01.vmx stop hard

Error:

# VMControl error -999: Unknown error: SoapError: ServerFaultCode(0) : (Operation failed since another task is in progress.)

[Troy_Clavell]

try to kill the VM and if that doesn't work, restart hostd

“ps -ef | grep

service mgmt-vmware restart

[aguacero]

SSH to the ESX host where the VM lives and run the following commands:

1. service vmware-vpxa stop

2. service mgmt-vmware restart

3. service vmware-vpxa start

Give that a try! It's a known bug in 3.0.x Supposedly fixed in 3.5

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[SuryaVMware · Accepted solution]

run vm-support -x will list the world ID of all the VMs. Pick up the world ID of the VM in hung state.

Run vm-support -X <WID> answer 'y' to the quesions that follow, it will take a while to finish the dump logs and will kill the VM eventually.

You will be able to power-on the VM.

-Surya

[mcraig88]

Nope, this didn't work. Thanks though.

[mcraig88]

This appeared to work at first, but I then tried to power off the VM,

and it timed out and did not power off.

Thanks though.

[Troy_Clavell]

see this thread, there are a lot of good suggestions, maybe one will work for you

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/87797

[mcraig88]

Thanks SuryaVMWare also made a suggestion that I am currently trying:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1187696#1187696

[RParker]

Nope, this didn't work. Thanks though.

I know this isn't real scientific, but can you vmotion the other VM's and just reboot the host?

ESX is software, and sometimes software is designed for one thing but at times it does something completely out of control (like not let you reboot / power off a VM). This doesn't happen very often, but ESX does hang VM's.

A reboot / reset of the host may be your only hope.

[mcraig88]

Unfortunately, the powers that be decided we didn't need VMotion. So

that is not an option.

This worked though.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1187696#1187696

Thanks for your ideas.

[arthurdent78]

vmware-support did the trick for me